Another Haiti Day 6, Water Team

Day six in Haiti. This has proven to be trip of soul searching. Today, I spent my second day working with the Cadillac water team. My first day, Friday, was an incredible mountain climbing expedition. Working with the water team is similar to seeking souls for Christ. We have to travel deep into neighborhoods that are safe yet present us with a realistic view of how the average Haitian lives daily. Our major goal was to trade something a family has trusted for years for something that could bring and continue health. We could not force the change on them. We had to negotiate and educate them on the benefits of changing an old practice.

Today I wanted to find the well source that our client family uses to fill the new filter being installed. I and four of the other team members went to the well with a client family member and helped her pull water out of the well in a tiny one-half gallon bucket to transfer it to a five gallon bucket. We then had to carry it back to her home and fill the filter container with the water.

I was so embarrassed as one Haitian member of our team had to teach me how to fill the small bucket as it lay connected to only a thin rope at the top of the well. After several attempts I learned and retrieved the water our client needed. What seems automatic for me at home was a labor of love today in Haiti.

As I remember the living water Jesus promised those who followed him in John 7:31 I more deeply understand the value in providing drinkable water to a family who had no other means of acquiring sanitary water. I left that impoverished neighborhood with the mental picture of the proud faces of some of the adults and children I saw watching me pull water from an old well to give to a family that just received a new filter to purify the water they had previously drank with no fear.

Lionel

Hartford Memorial, Detroit